Author: Rupi Kaur
Rupi Kaur has brought us a new genre of poetry. There are a few contemporary poets like her and they are referred to as Instapoet — a reference to the fact that they post their short pithy poems on social medium like Instagram.
I have very limited experience in free-verse poetry and am not even sure I could recognize it if isn’t for the formatting of left aligned lines. However, I have to say that Rupi strikes an emotional chord with her poetry. It comes across very authentic. I couldn’t help but feel that it was her personal struggle as an impressionable young woman growing up in Canada. Through her verse, I experienced the joy of falling in love and then the pain of a breakup. Rupi ends by emphasizing the virtue of healing, saying “you must want to spend the rest of your life with yourself first”.
Author: George Saunders
Just when I thought I'd seen it all, there’s another crazy writer's artifice that pops up from an unexpected corner. First let’s get a definition out of the way. Bardo is apparently a Tibetan word that refers to the intermediate state between death and re-incarnation.
Willie Lincoln, the third son of Abraham Lincoln died unexpectedly at the age of 11 from Typhoid. He was temporarily interred at the Oak Hill cemetery where apparently President Lincoln visited him a couple of times. Out of this little thread of story, George Sanders weaves a magical tale that is told by no less than 166 ghosts who are in the bardo. The beauty of this setting is that George is able to summon a huge cast of characters who must have been present during Lincoln’s time to provide us with a good rendering of what life must have been like then.
If this was set as a conventional novel, he would have had to create a whole lot of fictional settings to bring these 166 characters together. However, using his bardo trick, he is able to have them all at his beck and call. They are a varied bunch and do come from all walks of life. Since most of them have been plucked out of their lives, it is interesting to learn about how each of them died.
It seemed like some of them had been in the bardo for a long period of time. I couldn’t quite figure out what triggered their re-incarnation, but did see that it was punctuated by the “matterlightblooming” phenomenon. All of this serves as a backdrop for President Lincoln’s grieving over his loss and the influence of the varied cast of characters in the bardo have on him.
Author: Joshua Green
I resisted reading this book for a long time. I felt that I had already overdosed on the news and information related to Trump and the last thing I needed was to read a whole book on Trump and his Chief Evil Influencer, Steve Bannon.
Once I got down to reading a few pages, I quickly realized that the book was more about Steve Bannon than Trump. I learnt that the seeds for the Trump’s victory in 2016, were sown way back and the unifying theme of all these supporters were a hatred for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Apparently the Ken Starr investigation stoked all the flames of the Clinton-haters, but failed to deliver as Bill continued to remain President. Worse still, after he retired, his Foundation was very successful both in raising money and having an impact on the world.
David Bossie spent his lifetime trying to prove some of the scandals that swirled around the Clintons. When Trump enlisted Bossie to his campaign, he pulled in Steve Bannon and fellow Clinton hater. However, Steve was more than just that. He was a naval officer during Carter’s presidency and had seen the disastrous attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages from up close. When the Twin Towers were brought down by Islamic terrorists, he was convinced that the spread of Islam had to be stopped.
The book follows the twists and turns of Steve Bannon’s career and it is amazing to read about all of his exploits. He started out as a Naval Officer, but quickly figured out that it would take him a long time to wield any influence there. He made his way to Wall Street and made money at Goldman Sachs. He launched his own investment firm specializing in the media and made money off a bunch of shows including Seinfeld. He then got the opportunity to make movies and made a total of 18 movies. He founded the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) where he helped feed the media with all kinds of stories, most of which were aimed against the Clintons. In fact, he used the GAI to publicize Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash, which documented the foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation, and some possible reasons into why they were made. It is during this time that he developed a relationship with the Mercers and Breitbart news. All of this is quite a journey for one individual and I couldn’t help but admire the drive and influence that Steve wields.
The book is well written and helped me understand all the supporting cast in the Trump victory. I quickly realized that Trump was a convenient front-man for the whole movement. What is interesting is to try and figure out how they will manipulate Trump, now that he is in the Oval Office. The book doesn’t quite go there, and I would love to see some speculation on that.
Author: Grame Macrae Burnet
This book is classified as historical fiction and is set in an Alsace town in France. It’s very clever in its setup and I don’t want to divulge too much here lest I spoil the surprise. I have to say that Graeme Macrae Burnet completely sucked me in and it’s only now, as I write this review that I realize the ploy. On reading several amazon reviews, I can see that many a reader is completely unaware of the duplicity.
The main story is a classic a thriller set in a sleepy old French Town, Saint Louis. It excels in painting the idiosyncrasies of the main character, Manfred Baumann who as a Bank employee, is as unexciting as ever. The plot meanders slowly between his youth and current times. The detective Georges Gorski is a Poirot-like character. Mr. Burnet moves the plot slowly along and the pleasure is not so much in uncovering the next moves, as it is in discovering the foibles of the characters and their friends and family. There’s always some sexual tension in the air to keep you riveted and eager to turn the page. You kind of guess the end, but are still eager to connect the dots and see how Burnet is going to lead you there.
It’s a quick and entertaining read.
Author: Mark Manson
The sub-title sums it up pretty well and I viewed it as a “counterintuitive approach to living a good life”. Mark grabs your attention with the gratuitous use of profanity and at times, I felt he was going for shock value. After a while, he settles down into more of a philosophical debate. Clearly Mark has read a lot and is trying to distill his wisdom in a few chapters and not so few f*cks.
Here’s a sampling of points I wrote down. Instead of looking to be right all the time, we should be looking for how we are wrong all the time. Because we are. Being wrong opens up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth. I couldn’t agree more with the author on the importance of failure in our learning process. “Failure is the way forward. If we are unwilling to fail, then we are unwilling to succeed.”
There are many more nuggets of wisdom spread out through the book . We are inundated with information highlighting success, that we believe that “exceptionalism is the new normal”. He says “weathering the shit storm“ builds emotional resilience, much like exercise and physical pain is required to develop stronger muscles.
He tells a rather candid story of a woman “Erin” who is trolling him and making his life miserable. A little sleuthing on Google will tell you that this is about Erika Awakening and she is spouting some pretty harsh stuff about Mark. He tells the intro to the story, but falls short of making any conclusions. The best he has to offer is “Evil people never believe that they are evil; rather, they believe that everyone else is evil.”
I found the book to be fairly deep philosophically, especially when Mark talks about death and the meaning of the life we live. He refers to a life on this world as “immortality projects”. He credits Becker with this characterization and makes an interesting argument that “wars and revolutions and mass murder occur when one group of people’s immortality projects rub up against another group's.”
Author: Paulo Coelho
One of the common sights in Bangalore is bookseller sitting by the side of the road with a small collection of popular books — some used, some rather poor reprints. Almost every one of them will have a copy of Paulo Coelho’s Alchemist. After seeing it numerous times, I finally broke down and bought a copy. However, I didn’t actually read it until fairly recently and I can’t imaging why I took so long.
The book is very well written and only a few pages in length. The story is rather gripping and reads like a fable. A young Andalusian shepherd named Santiago has a desire to travel the world and discover a hidden treasure. It turns out that his destination are the Pyramids in Egypt and the story starts with him exchanging one of his sheep to start his journey. One thing leads to another and there is a moral at the end of this story for all of us.
The writing is simple and direct. Which also means that you will be done in an hour or two. A good book for young readers, but then, the morality tale might put them off.
Author: Stephen Greenblatt
The title of this book is pretty bold. At first glance, I noticed that this book had won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction and quickly concluded that I had a winner on my hands. The first few pages moved quickly and Dr. Greenblatt does a great job of setting the stage and grounding you in the culture in Europe in the early 15th century. It is a time when the Pope was all-powerful and Christianity was running rough-shod in Europe.
It was a time when modern humanism was popular among the intellectuals. They were eager to develop what are known today as humanities: grammar, history, poetry and philosophy. A little known fact is that many of the great works of ancient times from Cicero, Plutarch, Socrates, Aristotle, etc. didn’t survive the ravages of time and are lost forever. Since the printing press had not been invented yet, these were handwritten manuscripts, some of which were carefully preserved in monasteries. With the rise of Christianity, many of them were intentionally suppressed and some may even have been written over by the monks. Papyrus being a scare commodity, it often made economic sense to erase the books and just write over them. The monks used to spend a good chunk of their time, reading and copying over documents and so were fertile ground to go hunting for ancient manuscripts
With this backdrop, we have an unusual savior in Poggio Bracciolini. He studied law and entered the service of Cardinal Landolfo Maramaldo as his secretary. He soon rose to being a papal Secretary under several different Popes. He was respected for his excellent Latin and his extraordinary beautiful handwriting. The latter quality being key to his ability to copy rare manuscripts. To cut a long story short, he discovers the only surviving manuscript of Lucretius’ De Rerun Natura — on the Nature of Things — and gets it copied. This is a 7000+ verse poem that is inspired by the Greek Philosopher, Epicureus and was written around 50 BC. Epicureus postulated that it was reason, and not religion, that was critical to understanding the world we inhabit. It proposes that there are laws of nature that govern the many phenomenon that we observe around us. It expounds on many modern concepts, including the fact that matter is comprised of atoms. Atoms are constantly in motion and can neither be created or destroyed. He tackles astronomical phenomena and states that the universe is infinite. In addition to the many accurate scientific statements, the poem is considered to be a masterpiece in latin.
Very soon the printing presses were invented and Lucretius’ De Rerun Natura got injected back into circulation and inspired the great thinkers of the Renaissance. It is Dr. Greenblatt’s view that this book was instrumental in inspiring us to creating the modern world we live in today.
Author: Ryan Holiday
It isn’t news that traditional marketing with press releases, TV commercials, billboards and huge product launches are a thing of the past. The “technical” term for the new strategy is called growth hacking and it is a way to use the product and its technology to reach a wide audience. The beauty is that it’s reach is much wider than the traditional marketing channels, and it costs a lot less. I am sure you ask why isn’t everyone doing it then? To understand the nuances I recommend this book. In just a little over a 100 sparsely spaced pages, Ryan breaks down the key principles of growth hacking. He also practices what he preaches. Even though book publishing is not an ideal candidate he uses some of these techniques to drive the demand for his book. Read it and see for yourself what all the hype is about.
Author: Bryan Denson
This story was featured on the “Snap Judgement” podcast and I was riveted by the tale. Jim Nicholson is one of the highest ranking CIA officers who was convicted as a Russian spy. That by itself would have made a good story. What got my jaw to drop was how he manipulated his son to help him continue to provide the Russians with information.
This is a real-life spy story so it doesn’t have the plot twists and action of a fictional one. Since Jim Nicholson is behind bars for a good portion of the book, I learnt a lot of prison slang. Killing birds is a euphemism for serving a long stretch and killing time one day at a time. When you get out of prison you “kill your number” and you “share your house” with your cell-mate. There were a few other words I picked up like “swankienda” which refers to a large mansion or house. It is most likely a combination of swanky and hacienda and and was popularized in Houston before spreading to the rest of the US.
Overall, this is a well researched and well written book. It is a great read and I came away feeling sorry for the entire Nicholson family whose lives were turned upside down more than once.
Author: Sujatha Gidla
There are plenty of books written about untouchables and the Indian Caste System. This one is different. Sujatha comes from a Christian Untouchable family and until I read this book, I didn’t realize that this could be a big problem. In theory, the caste system does not apply to Christianity. However, as you will discover in this book, it is so deeply rooted in India that even God can’t help fix this.
Until I was halfway through the book, I didn’t realize that Sujatha’s Uncle was one of the pioneers in the Marxist movement in Andhra Pradesh. A good portion of the book covers his entry into politics and his struggle with the leadership. It is also amusing to read about her mother’s discovery that there are Christians who are not Untouchable in India. Another eye-opener to me was the many different untouchable castes and how there is a pecking order among them as well. There are Gollas who are cattle herders and Malas who are servants. These are probably at the top of the untouchable ladder. The bottom rungs have the Upparis, who are diggers, then come the Pakis who clean latrines. The lowest rung is reserved for the Madigas who haul dead animals. You will also become familiar with the wealthy landowners who are either Reddys or Kammas and the Kuppas who are wealthy agriculturists.
Overall, the book gave me a peek into the horrible conditions that untouchables face in India today.
Author: Balli Kaur Jaswal
The title may seem off-putting for many readers and I have to confess that I was a little embarrassed to take this book out and read it on a plane. Before I go too far let me tell you that there is plenty of romance but very little eroticism in the book. The story is set around the strong sikh culture and traditions in Southall, London.
Nikki is a young India girl who is working as a bartender in a local West London Pub. She is independent and a bit of a rebel from her fairly traditional Sikh parents and sister. She is a law school dropout and is eager to find a toehold on a career ladder, so when she sees an add for creative writing she jumps at it. One thing leads to another and she finds herself teaching a classroom of Sikh widows don’t know how to read and write. She gets creative and you have to read the novel for the rest of the details. The book has a little bit of everything; there’s romance, comedy, mystery, suspense and it is well written and a joy to read.
Author: David Grossman
This book feels like it was written as a dare — can you turn a stand up comedy act into a book ? I love comedy, but a good portion of the entertainment value is in the delivery. David Grossman, most certainly understands this and to be clear, the book does not have too many jokes.
The storyline is about a comedian who has seen better days calls on an old friend to watch one of his shows. The tension and suspense is around discovering the past of the comedian and how he is connected to the friend that he has invited. David does a great job of making you eager to turn the pages, while entertaining you with a joke or two. Fortunately it is a short book and it is well written.
Author: Jeff Hobbs
To say that Robert Peace was gifted would be an understatement. He overcame obstacles in his life that many of us are unable to even imagine, let alone come out successful. However, the tragic part of this story is that the environment ultimately brought an end to this very promising life. This book is about Robert’s journey by one of his close friend and room-mate at Yale, who clearly has a deep adoration for him. The beauty of the book is that Jeff does an amazing job of telling the story without any bias to judgement. Almost every character is portrayed as operating with best intentions and you are left as the reader to make your own judgements.
Robert Peace was born in July of 1980 to parents Jackie Peace and Robert “Skeet” Douglas in Newark, NJ. It is important to state that in the eighties, there was an abundance of gang-related violence in Newark, where 1 in 3 people lived below the poverty line. It was probably fitting that Time magazine crowned it the “most dangerous city in America”. Robert’s parents never married and one of the reasons could have been that Jackie knew that Skeet sold drugs and was not comfortable with it.
Skeet had a positive influence on Rob’s early life, but it quickly came to an end as he was arrested and jailed, for a crime that I will not reveal so that I don’t ruin the few surprises in the book. Jackie had a minimum wage job in a hospital kitchen and raised Rob on her meager income. She was so determined that Rob get a great education that she forked over a huge chunk of her salary to put Rob into private school. Rob for his part did astoundingly well in school and it culminated in his attending Yale for college.
It is here that we get a good glimpse of Rob’s life as the author Jeff Hobbs was his room-mate and close friend. From the everyday stories of their college life you get a sense of how Rob must have struggled to fit in at Yale. His poverty at home must have made it hard for him to relate to fellow students whose families were most likely at the other end of the income spectrum. While Rob still fares very well academically, you see the first chinks in his armor from a social perspective.
I won’t go further with the details, but the title itself tells you that there is no happy ending in store for Rob. The beauty of the book is to analyze for yourself, how hard it is for a person to cross socio-economic barriers. Jeff lays it out there as it is and you are left wondering what individuals or institutions could have done to have prevented this tragedy. More importantly, it will get you thinking about what you can do to prevent several similar ones from recurring.
Author: Adam Grant
Adam Grant is a highly celebrated professor from the Wharton School of Business where he has won the best teacher award for several years in succession. Sheryl Sandberg has written a glowing introduction to the book that highlights the huge impact that Adam has had in her personal life. I probably was expecting too much from the book from all of the hype that i had read, and I have to admit that it came a little short. However, it is still a great book that debunks some well held myths and preconceptions about entrepreneurs and creative minds.
There are numerous quotes that I have saved from the book and I am having a hard time deciding which ones to include in this review. Let me start with a definition: “the hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists”. This seemingly general quote is made in the context of users who reject the default browser on their computers and install Firefox or Chrome instead. Turns out that they do much better at work than those who accept the default browser on their system. IMHO this is a very low bar of originality, but an interesting finding nevertheless.
The book has tons of interesting anecdotes and original characters. One of which is Ray Dalio, the CEO of hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. He encourages employees of Bridgewater to be brutally honest and openly criticize each other. Adam writes that he “fires employees for failing to criticize him”. The goal is to avoid the trap of “groupthink” which kills originality. Dalio believes that a “thoughtful disagreement between experts creates an efficient marketplace of ideas, where the best on emerges over time”. While all of this makes for an interesting story, Adam stops short of endorsing any of this directly.
Sometimes it comes down to allowing ourselves the room for originality. Adam describes Martin Luther King’s preparation for his seminal “I have a dream” speech. It turns out he ad-libbed this most memorable part of the speech. Adam credits the “Zeigarnik effect”, which dates back to a 1927 finding by the Russian Scientist Bluma Zeigarnik. He demonstrated how human beings keep replaying unfinished task in their mind and hence have a better memory of them. Once a task is marked as finished in our brain, we have a tendency to forget about it. There are many little psychological theories from Maslow to Kahneman that Adam uses to nudge you towards a more non-conformist state of mind. I was also surprised to learn that my siblings, parents, mentors, all play their part in nurturing and encouraging my original instint. Read the book to learn for yourself.
Author: Marc Levinson
The Annual GDP growth for the US has dropped from a high of 5% in the sixties to around 1.5% currently. If you look at China or India, they are roughly in the 7% range in the current times. But it wasn’t always like this. If you are curious to learn about the ups and downs of the world economies starting from World War 2, Marc has a wealth of knowledge that he shares with us in his perspective of the economic journey of the major parts of the world after the war.
In a nutshell, his thesis is that the first twenty five years after the war saw an unprecedented growth in the economy. It was the classic postwar boom and economic growth in the Western World reached its peak around 1970. There were plenty of high paid manufacturing jobs in the US that brought overall prosperity to the nation. After 1970 productivity slowed down. Labor Unions got powerful and demanded higher wages and perks. Furthermore the inefficiencies of government regulation and large state run industries (coal, steel, transportation, etc.) started to weigh heavily on the economy.
The transportation system in US was highly regulated in the 70s. Airline routes are a good example of how the government limited the number of airlines on any given route and that allowed them to charge high prices. They made a good profit despite the fact that many planes had tons of empty seats. Compare that with the disruption caused by Uber today with Taxis. They have opened the market up not only deregulated the taxi industry, but have gone further and made it incredibly easy for an individual to offer you a transportation service for a fee.
Marc takes a heavy subject like world economics and narrates many of these events in a story-like manner that makes the book enjoyable. I marveled at how many of the changes like privatization, seemed to be trends that spread from one country to another. If you are remotely interested in economics, I highly recommend this book.
Author: J. D. Vance
J.D. Vance could not have picked a better time to write his novel. He opens with the statement which I paraphrase as “So much of America’s white working class are hill people, and they are not doing well.” The numerous postmortems of the 2016 Presidential Elections has made this abundantly clear; so much so that many political pundits are eager to read “The Hillbilly Elegy” to see if it gives them some special insight that they can use in the next election.
JD is prescient In saying that "Bad neighborhoods no longer plague only urban ghettos; the bad neighborhoods have spread to the suburbs". In today's Wall Street Journal I read that rural America is the new inner city. They profile Canton in rural Ohio that once had factories for train cabooses and axles for commercial trucks. Many of these have since closed down and opioid abuse is driving up crane in these neighborhoods. It looks very much like the Middletown that JD Vance describes in his book.
The book is a personal story of J.D. Vance’s dysfunctional family that traces its roots back to the Appalachian region in Kentucky. You get a first hand account of how precarious their lives are and they are one step away from falling afoul of the law, or turning homeless. As he points out several times, it’s a miracle that he got a college education and broke free from the shackles that hold back most of his fellow Appalachians.
I love this quote which I'm sure is taken from somewhere else "The road to hell, however, is paved with good intentions". This captures well the behavior of JDs extended family. There are many nuggets of information that caught me by surprise like the fact that "in the middle of the Bible belt, active church attendance is actually quite low."
Read this book to get a first-hand view of the Americans that swayed the 2016 Presidential Election.
Author: V. S. Naipaul
Other than Rabindranath Tagore, V.S. Naipaul is the only other person of Indian origin who has won the Nobel Prize for literature. He was born in Trinidad and his early novels are set in Trinidad and Tobago. Since I myself am of Indian descent and have spent a larger portion of my life in the United States, I am always curious to learn how Indians have assimilated in their adopted countries. My knowledge of the West Indies is limited to their Reggae Music and World Class Cricket team, and this book offered me the chance to sample a highly acclaimed author as well as learn something about Indians abroad.
From a quick search on the internet, I learned that “A House for Mr. Biswas” is based on his father’s life and it was one of the books that catapulted V.S. Naipaul to fame on the international circuit. A few pages into the book, I marveled at the impeccable prose and even though the book weighs in at 576 pages, it is a pleasure to read. The main character modeled after Naipaul’s father, is Mohan Biswas, who is quirky and interesting right from his birth. The local astrologer predicts that he will bring disaster to his family and Mohan lives up to this expectation repeatedly. A good portion of the book chronicles Mohan’s interaction and exasperation with his wife’s extended family, the Tulsi clan and the different houses they inhabited along the way.
Mohan makes several attempts to escape from the clutches of his in-laws but is largely unsuccessful. Most of the characters in the novel are of Indian origin, so I am guessing that Indians in Trinidad kept mostly to themselves. It is interesting to note that even though they had little to no connection with India, they hung on to some of the religious traditions. Notably, the caste system was very much in play and Mohan is eager to point out that Mohan's parents and the Tulsi’s were brahmins, and some of them were trained to perform the religious ceremonies. The disdain with which they treated
In one of his many forays living away from the Tulsi’s, Mr Biswas is banished to live in the plantation. You get a sense of his depressing life living in a shack overseeing the workers in the plantation. What is surprising, however, is that there is hardly any description of the life of the workers. Instead we get the full treatment of the materials required to build a house on the cheap. If it was not clear from the title, let me warn you that the houses that Mohan lived in are meticulously described and are clearly the subject of interest.
Author: Haruki Murakami
Toru Watanabe is what I would describe as a westernized Japanese college student. He has a passion for western culture and music and comes across as an intellectual loner. Some say that Murakami based this book on his own experience growing up in Japan.
The story begins with the tragic suicide of his close friend Kizuki, whose girlfriend Naoko develops a close friendship with Toru. The ebbs and flows of their friendship are what make the bulk of the novel. In between Toru encounters many interesting youthful characters that are beautifully fleshed out by Murakami. He has a gift for narration that makes me remember these supporting characters several months after I have read the book. There’s Midori who is a vivacious, outgoing classmate who has a boyfriend but is intrigued by Toru. There’s his other classmate Nagasawa who also has a girlfriend, but is a master at picking up girls and one-night stands. There are some other intriguing characters that are hard to describe unless you are Murakami.
I can see why he is such a celebrated author and adored by fans in Japan and the rest of the world. Apparently, Murakami became such a celebrity in Japan after the publication of Norwegian Wood that he had to flee the country to Europe and America for his own safety and sanity. He returned only in 1995 and continued his prolific writing.
He has a very pleasant writing style that is wonderful to read. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and will be reading more of him.
Author: Alec Ash
I have read a few books on China, but nothing like this one. From a book on Genghis Khan to a book on a Journey through China’s Farms and Factories, the theme has mostly been explaining how China got to be the way it is today. This book, on the other hand, is trying to say where China is headed and it examines the lives of six young Chinese people, all of whom were born after 1980.
There’s Dahai, whose father was in the military and grew up in the Hubei province. Xaioxaio was born in the Heilongjiang province and is a dreamer who owns a small business. Fred is the most learned, having earned her PhD degree and is a Communist Party Official’s daughter. Snail is a country boy who picks up an internet gaming addiction during his adolescent years. Lucifer is from Hebei province and aspires to be a rock superstar and finally Mia who is a fashionista and a punk rebel, from the the Xinjiang province.
The diversity in upbringing, experience and outlook of the six protagonists is amazing and highlights how there is no “one China” culture that the propaganda wants us to believe. While there are many differences, there are many things that are unique to China that will seem very odd to us. For example, there is a common belief that “If it wasn’t online it wasn’t true.” This is quite a contrast to my perspective in the US, where I don’t believe anything online unless it comes from a reputable institution that I am aware of. Another interesting twist is that "the political spectrum is reversed in China: the left is conservative and the right is liberal”.
The book is riveting and entertaining as you watch the struggle of the young Chinese from six different perspectives. Interestingly, there isn’t one that is super-successful, which I am sure there are plenty of examples. Most likely they weren’t too willing subjects for this novel.
Author: Antonio Muñoz Molina
At a recent party, one of our guests declared that Antonio Munoz Molina will someday win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He has won numerous Spanish awards and is considered one of Spain’s greatest living writers. I hadn’t read a single book of his, and decided to fix this deficiency immediately.
I drove to the library and found a translation of "In her Absence”. It was a short 126 pages and had an intriguing story-line about a troubled relationship between a woman of high society and a bureaucrat. Blanca lived a privileged life with a passion for art like painting, writing or sculpting. While she was not an artist herself, she rubbed shoulders with artists and sculptors who were at the top of their game. She could immerse herself in a great book and be impervious to even the presence of her husband Mario, who was more of an everyday man working to put food on the table, in Madrid. While Mario did not have a single sophisticated bone in his body he was madly in love with his wife Blanca. So he pretends to have a taste for the avantgarde art that so intrigues her.
Molina’s prose is breathtaking as he describes the incompatibility between the two and the ensuing mismatch. The ending, or should I say beginning, is bizarre and I will let you read it and make your own conclusion.
Author: Mohsin Hamid
This is a beautiful tale of an unusual refugee couple. While Mohsin does not name the country where the couple originates from, it is probably based, in no small part, to the turmoil in Syria. Exit West is about a young couple Said and Nadia. You witness them falling in love and trying to make a life for themselves in this big bad world. Escaping from their terror stricken hometown does little to solve their problems as they bounce around from one refugee camp to another.
At the outset you realize that Mohsin blends reality with imagination which gives the book a little surreal twist to it. Even though he throws in some humor and romance, the harsh reality of a refugee life is evident as you go from one chapter to another. The book is a mere 230 pages with double spaced lines, so it is a small price to pay to learn and appreciate the hard lives of the millions of refugees in the world we inhabit.
Author: Amos Oz
Lately, I have been on a reading binge of books written by Israeli authors. A selected set of short stories from Tel Aviv Noir set me off on this exploration. When I saw that Amos Oz, the celebrated Israeli author had a book selected for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, I quickly ordered it from my local library.
The main story is set in Jerusalem in the late 1950s where the protagonist Shmuel Ash, a young Israeli student, is struggling to make ends meet. He finds a job taking care of an infirm old man who is living with his beautiful and mysterious daughter-in-law Atalia. The book is split between Shmuel falling head over heels for the older woman Atalia and a theory that he is developing that Judas was the real founder of the Christian Faith.
The author builds up the suspense and mystery of Atalia, but I was quite disappointed in the story that unfolds. On the other hand the theory of Judas truly believing in Jesus and convincing him to go to Jerusalem and endure the ignominy of Crucifixion is fascinating. I would love to read a more seriously researched non-fiction version of this story if there is any merit to it.
In parallel with the above, there is the story of Shaltiel Abravanel, a one-time respected founding member of Israel’s Zionists, who pushed for integration of Israel’s Jews with the local Palestinians. He clearly did not want Israel to be a Jewish State, but rather a home for both Jews and Muslims from Palestine. It is an interesting time to surface these ideas as Trump tries to broker peace in the region.
Amos describes an Israel that is drunk with power against it's Arab neighbors. His character Abravanel opines that Israel does not realize the fact that "all the power in the world cannot transform someone who hates you into someone who likes you." He goes on to say that he is not against building up Israel's military might as long as we remember that "it can't solve anything. It can only stave off disaster for a while.”
Sobering thoughts for all of us to consider. The storyline however is weak and I was thankful that it was a quick read.
Author: Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
I have rarely been disappointed with international books that are translated into English. It isn’t surprising, given that they have first to be successful in their native land to even get the attention of American/English publishers. Then you have to find someone skilled in both languages who will painstakingly translate the book, making it readable in English without sacrificing the richness and nuance of the original story.
The translation for Waking Lions is so well done that if I had not seen the back cover, I would not have guessed that it was originally written in Hebrew. The author, Ayelet, tells the story of Doctor Eitan Green who is recently transferred to Beersheba and is taking his new SUV out for a spin after a tiring day at the hospital. It is dark and he doesn’t see the Eritrean man in front of him who he hits head on. He gets out of the car and being a doctor, quickly realizes that it is too late to save this man’s life. The drama that unfolds is a rather fantastic tale of how he tries to cover up this incident.
The book is a page turner that also doubles as a view into the discrimination that the majority of African immigrants face in Israeli. Doctor Green describes Sirkit, a beautiful Eritrian woman as "He knew that she was beautiful, and he knew that if he were to see her in the street, he would not give her a second glance”. I had to read that twice to convince myself that it wasn’t a typo and the deep meaning it conveys on how we are all blind to the prejudices that we carry.
Ayelet also seems to have done her research on medical procedures. There’s a ton of gory detail and some interesting trivia like the fact that the average human nail grows by 4 cm a year.
I loved the depiction of everyday life of Israelis and their encounters with the Eritreans and the Bedouins. While the plot seems rather fantastic to believe, the life and struggles of people in and around Beersheba seem all too real.
Author: Sheelah Kolhatkar
Every now and then, we hear of big insider trading scandals rocking Wall Street. When SAC capital pled guilty to insider trading in 2013 and settled with the SEC for a landmark amount of $1.8 billion, the world stopped and took notice. While several employees of SAC Capital were indicted, the owner, Steven Cohen walked away unscathed with over $10 billion of assets. Sheelah Kolhatkar does an excellent job in chronicling all the twists and turns around this case and the many different characters who were left without a chair when the music stopped.
If you have been around for a couple of decades you won’t have trouble appreciating that at the turn of the last millennium "Watching the Dow Jones industrial average go up became a national obsession”. It is during these heady times that hedge funds ballooned and their managers kept pushing the envelope so they could keep the high double digit returns going. SAC capital was one of the most successful hedge funds, pushing its traders and portfolio managers to go hunting for an “edge” to get ahead of other investors in the market. This could be by capitalizing on some inefficiences in the market, an analysis that nobody else had, or some information that most people didn’t have yet. It is the latter that is the most dangerous and has the potential to get you into “insider trading” territory which the author terms as “black edge”.
As you read one story after another on insider trading you can't help but conclude that it is rampant in the investment industry. The quest for "edge" seems natural for anyone who is looking to increase their chance of success. From the many different recent rulings on insider trading it's not even clear if the law lays down a very clear line that must not be crossed. Seven of the convictions described in the book where recently overturned on appeal because the court ruled that the person sharing the insider information must have somehow benefited from the transaction. Unlike other crimes like murder, assault or stealing where you can picture the victim, insider trading is harder for humans to conceptualize since the victims are not well defined.
In the end you're left with the question of why Matthew Marthoma didn't flip and implicate Steve Cohen, so he could have avoided a lengthy prison term. The last few pages of the book make a feeble attempt to outline some theories, but this is one piece of the puzzle that does not fit nicely. At times it's hard to keep up with the many different characters and different investigations that are going on but you get a huge appreciation for how difficult it is to prove insider trading cases.
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
I was enthralled by Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind by the author Yuval Noah Harari. To say that it is my all-time favorite book would be an understatement as I felt like I identified with the author. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on his next book, “Homo Deus” and the first thing I did when I found out that a translation was in the works, was to get in “electronic line” for the book at my library. Judging from the long list of people who had placed this book on hold, I was not the only one eager to see what Yuval had cooked up in round two.
From the very first page, you get the same engaging style that Yuval had perfected in Sapiens. He has the rare ability to dig up compelling pieces of our history, boil them down to the essentials and narrate them in a conversational style. What amazes me the most is that he can look at something we take for granted and ask why is it there. For instance, he asks “Why do we have lawns in the US ?” While it may not be too hard to ask questions like this, Yuval’s brilliance is how he looks into history to answer this question. He goes back to see the first documented instance of people having lawns and provides an explanation.
Unfortunately, he sometimes dwells too much on things that I didn’t care much about. He devotes many pages to the question of “Do animals have souls?”, and I really was not interested in a scholarly discussion on this topic. Regardless, I still took away a useful conclusion from this topic which is “Things that have meaning today may be irrelevant in a few thousand years”. He also offers up some bold opinions like "No other animal can stand up to us, not because they lack a soul or a mind, but because they lack the necessary imagination”, which will undoubtedly be impossible to prove or disprove.
Towards the middle of the book, he goes into a long treatise on modernity and what it means. He contrasts this with the classical theory of most religions where all things happen with a purpose that is pre-ordained by the supreme being. So in the past, if bad things were to happen humans could take comfort in the belief that this was God's will and that they would reap the benefits of their good deeds later on or in their next life. However, according to Yuval, "if modernity has a motto, it is 'shit happens’".
There are some interesting anecdotes of experiments from Facebook where by analyzing likes on a Facebook page, they can better judge a human’s current disposition than their friends or partners. Similarly there are examples where Google is better at knowing what is good for you than you yourself. Scary stuff indeed, and something that will get you thinking of what the future has in store for our species. This eventually leads to some predictions of what the highest life form will evolve into.
I got the feeling that Yuval was desperately trying to create theories for new religions with names like “techno-humanism” and “data religion”. I guess when you are in the business of predicting the future you have to make stuff up, and that is precisely what Yuval is doing here. Unfortunately, it is not very compelling to read.
Author: Patrick Lencioni
I have had this book in my possession for several years and had picked it up a couple of times, but never really got down to reading it. I must confess that I was turned off by the fact that this was a made-up story. Of all the stories out there, the last thing I was interested in reading was a fable about senior management in a fictitious business.
One fine weekend, I had run out of books to read and I picked this up again. This time, I was taken up by the very well written prose and even got into the story. Patrick does a great job of fleshing out the characters and does try to throw in an element of surprise or two. I found myself reflecting on our present team and trying to draw parallels with the Decision Tech corporation. I couldn’t stop turning the pages and was done in a couple of hours. This is an ideal book to read when you are starting out in a new team.
Author: Michael Lewis
How often do you get to witness first-hand the birth of a new field of study. At the start of the third millennium, I started seeing the term “Behavioral Economics” pop up all over the place and the book Freakonomics, that was published in 2005 clearly established this as a mainstream subject. It blends a little bit of psychology with basic economic principles and voila you find out more about how our mind works — or sometimes, more appropriately, doesn’t.
This book chronicles the life of two pioneers who gave birth to this new subject and published some of the most seminal work in behavioral economics. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman could not have been more different, but they shared a common passion of wanting to understand irrational human economic choices. They spent more than a decade working closely together at Hebrew University developing a deep understanding of how people make decisions and the inherent cognitive biases that we all are susceptible to.
A good part of their formative years were spent in the Israeli Military and Michael does a great job of recounting those experiences. He weaves the story of their lives along with details on the theories that they developed. In parts the book struggles to hold the readers attention and I wonder if a general reader will be interested enough to complete the book.
Author: Megyn Kelly
Megan Kelly was thrust into the spotlight when she demonstrated that she was not someone to back down from powerful man who was spouting venom at her in the Presidential debate. I admired her courage and ability to think quickly on her feet and be uncluttered in her responses and follow-up questions. Little did I know her backstory at Fox and her previous life as a lawyer.
Megan writes candidly about her experience growing up and losing a father at an early age. How she was always a hard worker and had a thriving law career, but someone did not feel that it was a career she desired. How some fortuitous events set her on the path for journalism where she has risen to the very top. Other than the Presidential debate and maybe a couple of interviews, I haven’t watched much of her show. However, I enjoyed learning more about her. I respect her all the more now!
Author: Patrick Hollingworth
This book makes a comparison between organization structure and styles of mountain climbing. The traditional style of mountain climbing is with large expeditions that are epitomized by the commercial ascents to Mount Everest. They involve large teams carrying lots of gear and supplies that a few of the climbers will use to make the ascent. This becomes a logistical nightmare and is not something you can modify in the middle of your journey. The weather and conditions on the mountain can change dramatically and if they are outside the bounds of the expeditions plans, things can get real ugly.
Patrick contrasts this with an alpinist style of mountain climbing which is light and fast. He gives the example of climbing the North Face of the Eiger mountain in Switzerland. This is a very technical climb that is extremely difficult and many groups have been unsuccessful at reaching the top. In 1938 a team of 4 climbers took 90 hours after surviving some really close calls. In 2008 a Swiss Alpinist named Ueli Steck climbed the North Face alone with just a small backpack. He made the ascent in less than 3 hours.
He posits that the traditional expedition-style is similar in nature to a large hierarchical organization. The alpinist style is a lean organization embracing agile principles. Patrick is himself an accomplished mountain climber and you can feel the authenticity with which he brings out the comparison. The premise of the book is to embrace the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) that is intrinsic to every organization and adapt your strategy to it. Don’t try to plan every dimension of a 3 year plan and expect to win in the market. Things are changing really fast much like the weather on the mountain.
I liked the premise of the book and the education on mountain climbing. Once you get past the comparison, most of the advice seemed rather obvious and was not particularly enlightening.
Author: Svante Paabo
Like most people, I was vaguely aware that Neanderthals were somewhere along the path of our evolution from ape to human, but knew very little about them. Then one day, I happened to stumble upon Svante’s TED Talk about “DNA clues to our inner Neanderthal” and was riveted by the idea that we all had a little bit of the Neanderthal genome in us.
This book is a first person account of Svante and his team’s journey in sequencing the Neanderthal genome and comparing it to humans across the globe today. He goes back to how he got his start in the genome sequencing business, and does an excellent job of describing all the technical challenges that he had to surmount. It is hard enough to sequence the genome for living beings where you have an abundance of DNA to work with. Svante and his team had to deal with a very limited supply of Neanderthal remains that could have been significantly contaminated by the DNA of other living things that they shared the soil with for the last 40,000 years.
By force of necessity, he invents various mechanisms to distinguish between the original DNA and possible contaminants and manages to find a way to sequence a majority of the Neanderthal genome. The book is very well written and I was drawn in by Svante’s enthusiasm for the subject. On completion of the book, I am obsessed with finding out more about how the modern homo sapiens came to be.
